Additions sought to list of Luisita land reform beneficiaries

Hacienda Luisita workers. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines – Nearly 200 persons have submitted additional documents in order to be included on the final roster of farm workers who stand to receive land from the Hacienda Luisita sugar estate since the release last month of a preliminary master list of beneficiaries, according to the Department of Agrarian Reform.

But no one has yet filed for the exclusion of specific individuals, in spite of allegations by militant farmers that some of those on the list are dummies, Agrarian Reform Secretary Virgilio de los Reyes said in a statement.

As of November 8, 197 individuals on the provisional list have submitted additional evidence to support their claim that they were employed as farm workers on Hacienda Luisita in 1989, while seven others have petitioned for inclusion on the list, the DAR said.

On October 31, the DAR released two lists: a preliminary master list of 5,365 people who stand to receive land, and a provisional list of 1,221 others who need to submit additional documents to prove they are legitimate beneficiaries.

The DAR said groups and individuals have until November 30 to file “Petitions for Inclusion” or “Petitions for Exclusion,” or, for those already on the provisional list, to submit additional evidence of employment as farm workers on Hacienda Luisita in 1989.

A final list of beneficiaries will be released in the first quarter of 2013.

Delos Reyes said the release of the preliminary list was intended precisely to “give all stakeholders the opportunity to scrutinize the list and analyze who they think should be included or excluded in the list.”

“What the DAR released was a preliminary master list, not the final master list. Any individual or group still has the chance to petition the DAR to include those they think should be in the list or exclude those they think should not be in the list,” he said.

“The mere fact that certain peasant organizations have been able to scrutinize the preliminary master list and identify certain persons they claim should not be in the list shows that the DAR is not hiding anything from the public,” Delos Reyes said.

He was referring to a statement from the leftist Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, which said five names on the preliminary list were those of stable hands looking after the horses of President Aquino’s relatives and not actual sugar plantation workers.

KMP assailed what it described as the inclusion of Cojuangco loyalists and dummies on the list and questioned the integrity of the DAR’s verification process.

But Delos Reyes pointed out that the KMP and other groups were welcome to raise their objections about the alleged dummies by petitioning for their exclusion.

“All records, including the file folders of all those included in the preliminary master list are open to the public,” he said.

In 1988, when the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program took effect, Hacienda Luisita offered an option to own shares of stock instead of land to the farmers, sparking a long court battle.

In May the Supreme Court upheld with finality the decision of the Presidential Agrarian Reform Council in 2005 to scrap the stock distribution option and to order the distribution of 4,915 hectares of Hacienda Luisita to 6,296 farm workers.